Welcome to the Intouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, July 31st.

Have you ever considered how your background in upbringing influenced your perception of spiritual things?

The series on listening to God continues to help you understand what determines what I hear.

Would you turn to Psalm 81?

If you recall that God is challenging his people because of their refusal to listen and he says beginning in verse 8,

Hear all my people and I will admonish you.

O Israel, if you would listen to me, let there be no strange God among you nor shall you worship any foreign God.

I the Lord and your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt, open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

But my people did not listen to my voice and Israel did not obey me so I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart.

To walk in their own vices, all that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways I would quickly subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their adversaries.

Those who hate the Lord would pretend obedience to him, their time of punishment would be forever, but I would feed you with the finest of the wheat

and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.

Here is what God says he would do if they would only listen.

Now let me ask you a question.

What is it that determines what I hear from God?

And there are three primary things that highly influence, greatly influence,

superiority over everything else that influences what you and I hear when God speaks to us as we know that He does.

And the first one is this, and that is our relationship with Him.

Our relationship with Him highly influences what you and I hear when we pray and we listen to God, for example.

A lost person that is a person who is an unbeliever, maybe somebody you never trusted Christ as your Savior.

And you say, well, what am I hearing from God?

The only thing you'll ever hear God speak about, the only thing you'll ever hear Him say is that you are a sinner, that you need to be saved.

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